My dad cries a lot these days.

Any sad movie never made him cry before. He didn’t cry when our dog died and when his son shaved his head to join the Navy. He also didn’t cry on the day that his dad passed away and his mom abandoned him when he was six years old. And now I see his tears very often.

“Men don’t cry.” He said this to me, who used to cry a lot, like a habit. He said I have to learn how to hold tears to be a ‘man.’ When he was a kid, he held his tears to protect himself from people who despised him just because he was an orphan. After he had a family, he didn’t cry to protect his wife and sons from this harsh world.

The tears he held slowly rose from his feet to his eyes. And the night he realized that he couldn’t hold anymore, the tears were already flowing down his cheeks. Now I see dad’s tears that nobody hadn’t noticed filling up inside of him. I asked if I could take a photograph of him when he was crying.

Even at this moment, he tries to be a ‘man’. “Yes, but don’t show this to your mom. She will cry.”